born 1767, London, Eng.
died Sept. 7, 1836, Blackheath, Kent
John Pond, detail from an engraving by Benjamin Smith after a portrait by Thomas Parkinson, 18th …
Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.
sixth astronomer royal of England, who organized the Royal Greenwich Observatory to an efficiency that made possible a degree of observational precision never before achieved.
Pond was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1807 and served from 1811 to 1835 as astronomer royal. During Pond's term, obsolete and worn-out instruments at Greenwich… |